Work smarter! 5 rules for repurposing real estate content

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Real estate professionals have to dedicate time to creating, executing, and maintaining their marketing strategy. With networking, showings, listing appointments, and more also part of your day-to-day responsibilities, it’s important to work smart to save time while still making sure your marketing is making an impact.

Repurposing content across platforms is a great and smart way to work efficiently as it streamlines workload and also ensures that your audience — who may not be subscribing or following you on all platforms — doesn’t miss a message. Below I share five rules and tips for when it is time to repurpose content across platforms. 

Make a plan 

The best way to start anything is with a plan. When you sit down to make a schedule for your content for the week or month, start with a defined plan of exactly what your content will contain and then how you will repurpose it across your platforms.

Knowing what platforms you are going to repurpose content to from the beginning will also help when you create the first piece of content — as you can start to extrapolate what is needed for each medium as you shouldn’t post exactly the same item across all.

Each platform will require content tailored to fit its format, and you will also want to adjust the copy and visuals slightly, just in case someone is following you across multiple platforms. 

Write the first piece of content 

When creating content, starting out writing the blog or longer article is helpful — that way you can go back and pull pieces out or edit down for platforms that require a shorter length for text. Or, you can summarize what you wrote briefly.

Taking a larger body of content and making it more sufficient is, in my opinion, always easier than making shorter content longer. Everyone has their own writing style and should work out what is best for them, however, I find that when writing longer pieces first, it helps me to brainstorm ideas for what content to create for other platforms.  

Customize for each platform 

As I mentioned before, you should be customizing your content for each platform. For example, Instagram is for those that enjoy smaller bites of information presented in a visual manner.

From your original blog, you will need to select or create appropriate images or infographics to illustrate your content, and keep the caption short and to-the-point. Infographics are a great way to summarize information in a visual way.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a graphic design expert. Programs like Canva can help you create great infographics with ease.  

Take your content from page to center stage 

When repurposing content across platforms, transform your content into video or audio for a podcast, YouTube, or even a short clip to post on social media or to send in an e-card. Be sure to keep the content engaging and lively and don’t just read the blog straight from the page.

Try inviting a guest on your podcast to film with, discussing the content of the blog. This is a great way to alter the messaging and make it a little more dynamic. Also, don’t forget to ask your guest to promote the piece on their channels too so you can benefit from a wider audience reach and hopefully gain more followers.  

Spring clean your content 

With so many items to attend to each day, it’s easy to forget about content once you have created it and shared across your platforms. Refer back to your content plan to check and see what you might need to audit, and make it a habit to track content that performs well so you can update it accordingly.

It’s important to update some of your top-performing pieces as the world moves so fast, your content can become outdated. Take the time to refresh dated references and adjust SEO if needed. Sometimes trending terms can need a quick refresh and can make the world of difference in reaching the right audience. 

When creating content to repurpose across multiple platforms, start out with a plan. This will help you not only keep on track but also to help create a checklist to ensure you don’t miss any items or aspects that you need to execute.

Start your creative process by writing your longer piece — typically a blog — and work back from there. In general, it’s easier to edit, summarize, and pull facts from, than to build out shorter copy into long-form content.

When writing your content, customize for each platform and adjust for those who may follow you on multiple channels. This can mean creating an infographic or using imagery or recording a podcast or video piece. Lastly, don’t forget to spring clean your high-performing content periodically to update outdated references and to refresh SEO terms. 

Laura Stace is vice president of luxury marketing for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.